In a world with an intellectual history of seven thousand years behind it, where do Pakistanis stand, what are they doing, what do they aspire to be, and what ought they to be doing? This Blog takes Notes of all of that ...

Sunday, October 4, 2015

What’s the game, politically speaking?

Note: I completed this article on December 9, 2014, and wrote: "(Government) ought not to be afraid of martial law
the prospects of which are zero presently, rather minus." Now merely 9 months later the prospects of martial law have grown formidably positive; so what's the game, politically speaking, let's try to see:

What's the game, politically speaking?

In
democracy, only a majority party is allowed to rule, and it may turn out to be
a tyranny; no smaller party alone can lay a claim to that privilege. That’s the
advantage of democracy one can cite while arguing with its enemies. Pakistan and
other countries like it are an exception. In such countries, parties of every
size can unleash a rule of tyranny under the banner of populism. Thus all the
gatherings and processions of every size which such parties hold are quoted as
a referendum against the government. Both Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and
Pakistan Awami Tehreek (PAT) have been quite vocal in delegitimizing the
government after each Jalsaa of theirs; thus PTI’s Faisalabad “lockdown” of
December 8 in their wisdom has already unseated the government.

That’s
because in countries like Pakistan the states have transformed themselves into
Jelly States. Years back, a Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal (1898-1987) denoted
them as Soft States; he meant to say: They have rules and laws and various
agencies to implement them but they do not do so, and that makes them Soft. He
termed them as ridden ‘by deficiencies in legislation and, in particular, law
observance and enforcement, a widespread disobedience by public officials and,
often, their collusion with powerful persons and groups ... whose conduct they
should regulate.’ Since then that quality of Softness of states has further
deteriorated; it appears that quality has now acquired the characteristics of
Jelly, a shapeless thing which fits in with any shape under any type of
pressure. That’s how Pakistani state looks like now!

On
the one hand a group of just a few hundred or thousand men armed with sticks can
paralyze the Pakistani state; that has already happened this August in
Islamabad; that happened in Faisalabad too, and is destined to happen in other
cities; and on the other hand, though the present government is all determined
to try a military general for allegedly committing High Treason but is facing
formidable hurdles at every step; all that testifies that the Pakistani state is
but helpless in establishing its writ in every domain. Here it doesn’t matter
whether it has got the will to establish its writ or not, because there is no
way to know but through its own efforts which it may put in establishing its
writ and with the help of which it may be ascertained that it is intent upon
establishing its writ.

Let’s
pick out three areas to see are there any efforts being made on the part of the
state to establish its writ. First is Taliban, who openly challenge the state
and want to capture it through an armed struggle. The state completely failed
on this count; for many years it let thousands of innocent citizens to be
killed by these fanatic warriors and remained mired in its own policy of appeasing
them and their supporter groups and parties. Now there is an operation going
on, whose range and scope is still not clear. The second area relates to
politics. A number of religious and political groups and parties openly
challenge the state just like Taliban; they rather blatantly indulge in
unlawful rhetoric and behavior so often that makes one wonders are they above
the law of the land. Not only are parties like PAT and PTI part of this club of
privileged politicians, there are a number of groups and parties which use
religion to further their political aims and objectives and though their social
base may not be more than a few thousand supporters but they and their leaders
work like mafias using arms and fascistic ploys and whenever they want they
paralyze the whole cities, and the state seems totally helpless!

As
has already been mentioned the third area is where the present government,
which is at the moment in command of the state of Pakistan, is trying its
hardest to bring a usurper general to book; that the Pakistan Muslim League
(N)’s government is doing that in the face of fatal odds is no secret now. And
the do-and-die and destabilizing politics of PTI needs to be explained in that
context also.

In
view of the above, one lesson, which every political analyst and politician be
he in the government or outside of it needs to learn, is that political actions
are not judged by the intentions of their actors, i.e. political parties and
leaders, but by their impact and consequences. That’s the first and in a sense
last tool of any political analysis; because in its absence no political action
may be understood in terms of its impact. As for the intentions of anybody, one
can never be sure of; and of course, when a murder occurs, it’s a murder only,
though the circumstances are taken into account which prompted that murder;
however, the fact of that murder is never disputed, which is a consequence of
the circumstances. For instance there may develop a consensus what impact the
PAT and PTI politics during this August-October and PTI’s present politics is
having on various things including the state and its writ, but never on their
intentions.

Unfortunately,
from those who are at the helm of affairs of the state and the politicians to
those who form the circles of opinion and political following no one is serious
in taking into consideration how the present politics of PTI is weakening not
only the writ of the state but state itself. Hence, it is this third area of
politics where the present government which manifests the state of Pakistan at
the moment must establish its writ. It ought not to be afraid of martial law
the prospects of which are zero presently, rather minus. It ought to bring the
state of Pakistan into the shape which the provisions of its constitution endow
it with. It ought not to allow the society of Pakistan slide into a chaos which
may result in a civil war. It’s time the state of Pakistan must act to
establish its writ in the political domain where it is required to be
established first!

The Blogger

The blogger cherishes a cosmopolitan spirit; he is a moralist; a rationalist; a philosopher; a political philosopher; he believes in Classical Liberalism, as a Theory of Conduct.
He has substantially contributed to the founding of the first free market think tank of Pakistan, Alternate Solutions Institute.
He is a writer who wrote / published dozens of articles on a variety of issues, and is author of 4 books.
He wrote / published short-stories in Punjabi, a regional language of Pakistan.
He composes poetry both in Urdu and Punjabi, and has already published one collection.